Founded in 1984, Gainward started out making video cards in Taipei, Taiwan. Since then, they've grown rapidly and have worked with almost every major video chip manufacturer. Not many had heard of Gainward, partially due to their large OEM focus, but many of the generic video cards you find are in fact made by Gainward. Ever seen a CardExpert board? That's Gainward. They also do a lot of OEM manufacturing work for larger, better known video card manufacturers. They won't say who, but rest assured that the list includes some of the largest video card manufacturers around.

Starting in 1998, they decided to apply their expertise in manufacturing to the extremely competitive motherboard business. Coming up with an excellent board on the first try is a difficult task, but everyone has to start somewhere. Going up against the big boys like AOpen, Abit, Asus, Tyan, and Intel is not an easy task. Let's see how they fare with the first board AnandTech has looked at from Gainward, the i440ZX based 6IZB.

New Anand Tech Report Card Rating
67/F

Do not compare newer ratings to older ones, the newer ratings are much more aggressive

The Good

A look at the 6IZB provides hope for Gainward in this seemingly impossible battle. A 3/1/1 (PCI/ISA/AGP) configuration is about the best available for a microATX board. The microATX specifications are followed closely, with the Socket-370 in the right position to provide cooling from the power supply. HDD/FDD and ATX power connectors are placed at the front of the board to prevent cable clutter.

An onboard ESS Solo-1 PCI chipset provides basic sound without taking up a slot. There are only 2 DIMM slots, thanks to the limitations of the i440ZX chipset (for information on how ABIT has gotten around this limitation, read the ABIT ZM6 Review).

Two fan connectors are also available - one by the CPU and one in the back left corner of the board, behind the expansion slots. The second fan connector is in a nearly useless position unfortunately. Nice Foxconn connectors are used throughout except on the CPU socket where a "Beta" (the company's name is Beta) connector is used. The Foxconn's are all solid, as we've come to expect from them, but the Beta connector feels flimsy. The almost standard green heatsink is found atop the i443ZX chip and is mounted with thermal tape. Seven 1500uF capacitors are located the CPU socket with a three more 1000uF caps between the CPU and the DIMM slots. The pins for front panel connections are conveniently placed at the front left of the board in such a way that they will not block any expansion cards from being used.

CPU setup is fairly simple. A DIP switch block adjusts the multiplier according to settings found both in the manual and silk screened on the board. Overclockers will be disappointed to see that only two bus speeds are available, 66 and 100MHz, the ones that are officially supported by the Intel for i440ZX. Fortunately, Gainward has least provided a jumper block for forcing 66 or 100MHz. There is also an auto-detect setting as well. However, most Socket-370 CPU's will not be able to handle a 50% increase in speed caused by overclocking the FSB from 66MHz to 100MHz..

The BIOS also suggests some minimal performance enhancing settings such as a recommendation to select CAS 2 upon boot. Hardware monitoring information is provided in the BIOS as well. The system can be powered on by not only the regular power button, but also a password, hot key, or mouse button.

A CD includes drivers for the on board ESS Solo-1 under Windows 9x and NT 4.0 as well as hardware monitoring software for the onboard Winbond chip. The Winbond monitors system voltage, two fan speeds, and CPU/board temperatures via board mounted thermistors.

The Bad

Stability and performance is not exactly the 6IZB's cup of tea. During repeated Winstone 99 runs, the system would often crash, lockup, or otherwise fail to complete the tests. When it did make it through a complete run, performance was significantly below that of other boards - often less than half. "Often" less than half because the scores fluctuated greatly between runs, from about 7 to around 12 on AnandTech's Intel Celeron 366. For those that don't have Winstone 99 scores memorized (I don't! ;), a typical score for a Celeron 366 on an i440ZX chipset board is 18. Although unlikely due to the magnitude of fluctuation, this is possibly due to clock speed fluctuations that Winstone also complained about quite often. A clean install of Windows 98 and the same hardware used in other AnandTech test beds were used for testing. Testing was performed with and without the onboard sound enabled. With scores this low, it seems almost as if the cache is disabled, but Winstone and other programs that report cache showed 128KB, as expected for a Celeron A processor.

Quake scores were similarly horrible, mustering just 2.8 fps while similar boards achieve at least 15 fps in software mode and demo1.dm2. Again, scores fluctuated.

The onboard ESS Solo-1 PCI sound cannot be disabled via jumpers or BIOS. To make matters worse, it is always assigned the same IRQ as the AGP video card - another possible source for the low performance. On top of all that, it takes up two IRQ's - the one assigned by the BIOS to the PCI card and another for DOS Sound Blaster emulation. To top all that off, there's no way to disable the USB IRQ.

Thanks to limitations of the ZX chipset, only 2 DIMM slots are available and memory expansion could become an issue. Make sure you buy as much RAM as you can the first time - you'll only have one shot to upgrade without throwing away some old RAM.

Power management support is also lacking. ACPI is not supported at all, which is already quite useful under Windows 98 and will become even more important under Windows 2000. A BIOS update could fix the IRQ and ACPI problems, but none is available as of now for that purpose.

The manual is not very useful for the first time system builder with little information on how to install the actual board. It covers three different boards, but fortunately they only vary in the chipset used, so this is not a major compromise.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS.: No

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS.: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

AnandTech Motherboard Testing Methodology

The Final Decision

The sound/AGP IRQ situation certainly are bad enough, but the performance and stability are unforgivable. A BIOS update likely could fix the IRQ and ACPI issues, but until then, there is no way around those problems. Gainward's first chance at AnandTech was a complete failure. As such, definitely stay away from this board until Gainward has had some more experience in the motherboard business and a chance to deal with their problems.

How it Rates